-The Indian Express ‘A farmer’s distress can be handled if he does not have to worry about his next meal’ If you ask Chate Gnaneshwar — from Emaikunta in Indervelli mandal of Adilabad district or other farmers who cultivate foodgrains for self-consumption like him — of a solution to control farmer suicides, he is most likely to point out towards ensuring food security for the poor agriculture community. “The distress brought upon...

-The Hindu People across 21 States may be affected by the Supreme Court order that rejected their claim A recent Supreme Court order may lead to the eviction of lakhs of persons belonging to the Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFDs) categories across 21 States — their claim as forest dwellers have been rejected under the Forest Rights Act of 2006. A three-judge Bench of Justices Arun Mishra, Navin Sinha...

-The Hindu The labour force may have actually shrunk while the Modi government has been in office Attuned as we have become to political grandstanding on the purpose of democracy, we may not have imagined that something so prosaic as statistics can alter our perception of how it is actually working for us. The emergence over the past few months of data on employment, speaking precisely the lack of it, cannot but...

-Hindustan Times The law provides for giving land rights to those living on forest land for at least three generations before December 31, 2005. The Supreme Court has asked the governments of 17 states to evict an estimated one million tribal and other households living in forests after their claims of the right to live in forests were rejected under the Forest Rights Act. The court has asked the evictions to be...

-The Hindu Business Line Not very, going by IMD gauge in Badnapur; insurers depend on Skymet AWS If you imagine a rain observatory as a centre with scientific equipment and team of researchers monitoring data, you are mistaken. The writer visited a rain observatory in Badnapur town of Jalna district in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad division. This was in the terrace of the Gram Panchayat Office. The writer was taken aback by what she saw there:...